Artillery crew members who fired thousands of rounds in combat came home plagued by hallucinations and psychosis
Could this problem also be affecting civilian gun enthusiasts? Or is the order of magnitude of the exposure just wildly lower compared to the military, even in the most enthusiastic?
If you ever get the chance, go shoot some small caliber weapons. I think everyone should at some point to have a baseline in their head for what guns are. Plus, I think it’d be good for people to know you can become really hard to hit by all but the best shooters by… walking away slowly in a zigzag. Near impossible if you run.
And then if you have a chance to be around some small artillery, do that too. It’s hard to describe the difference.
(“You” here is used to address HN in general, not you personally)
Tangentially related: Caltech has a cannon on campus (most notable for being stolen by MIT in 2006)[0] that fires twice per quarter, once towards the beginning and once towards the end. It is loud—you can hear it on the other end of campus[1]. Although to be fair, I don't know what they put in it and/or how the blank's loudness would compare to a modern artillery piece firing an actual projectile....
> If you are a fast runner or have bad knees, run in a straight line away from the attacker towards cover. The faster you can get away, the fewer shots they will be able to fire.
>If you are a slower runner and do not have knee trouble, a zig-zag run may be a better option. You may still be hit in this case, but the chances of being hit in a vital area may be reduced.
I’m guessing there aren’t many studies on this, but as a young, fast runner I’d zigzag every time if they’re shooting _at_ me. At least run in a straight line that isn’t collinear with the shooter’s position. Obviously, if you can find cover, put it between you and them and cover distance.
It’s so, so hard for any amateur to hit a target that is moving radially in a polar coordinate system centered on them, at all. I’d bet your average shooter who makes the news can’t put 7/10 shots in a stationary silhouette at 10yd. It’s harder than you’d think.
Radially might be the wrong word; I thought for a while about it. You’re correct, your goal is to present a target that is moving from the perspective of the shooter. Ideally not moving at a constant angular velocity.
> you can become really hard to hit by all but the best shooters by… walking away slowly in a zigzag. Near impossible if you run.
Idk if i would trust my life with that. What if they just spray a bunch of bullets in the general direction I am? Also what is the minimum distance where this tactic becomes effective? I just can’t imagine that zigzagging helps that much when you are 2 meters away from the shooter. And then there is the question of what is the typical distance between the shooter and the victim in most gun violence scenarios. Would not be surprised if that is inside the “zigzag helps you” distance.
Besides… how would going to a range and shooting guns help one learn this information? It feels what you really would need is someone practicing running away from someone with murderous intent to get an intuitive understanding of what you are claiming. And of course people are reluctant to practice that.
> What if they just spray a bunch of bullets in the general direction I am?
From what I understand, real soldiers generally don't spray bullets like you see in movies or video games unless they are in a defensive machine gun nest or on some sort of vehicle. Ammo is an extremely finite and precious resource on the battlefield. You can't carry much with you, and you don't necessarily know when you can resupply, so every shot has to count. If you spray bullets you'll be out within seconds and then you're on a battlefield unarmed. Not good.
> And then there is the question of what is the typical distance between the shooter and the victim in most gun violence scenarios.
In a war? Can be quite high.
> how would going to a range and shooting guns help one learn this information?
Ranges have moving targets, you try to hit them and observe that it's hard.
A standard NATO soldier should carry 210 rounds of 5.56 ammo. That's 7 30-magazine clips if he actually has all of them in clips.
If you ever saw any combat video, soldiers often fire a LOT, experienced or not (experienced just tend to hit more often). Maybe not a full auto, but nobody thinks in '1 bullet per enemy' mentality, self-preservation makes you overdo it, and they train you to not save on ammo unless you are cut off from supplies.
> U.S. forces have expended at least 250,000 small-caliber bullets for every insurgent killed in the present wars
Think about that number for a second. Technically, 1000 fully equipped NATO soldiers fire all their carried ammo per 1 single dead enemy. Life ain't Call of Duty.
Of course nobody thinks they're going to get a kill shot with every single bullet. But if you were to fire continuously you'd get through 210 rounds in like 20 seconds or something. Unless you plan to be in the battlefield for only a few minutes you've got to be pretty careful with that ammo.
I was the victim of an attempted robbery in NYC. I had fired a pistol before, so when the robber threatened me with one (which he may or may not have had) I did some mental calculations and came to the conclusion to run, hard, in the direction where there seemed to be the most people. If he had a piece on him, by the time he drew it from his hoodie and aimed, I would be far enough away to make an accurate shot difficult... and if he missed he might hit someone down the road. I calculated he wouldn't be stupid enough to risk it.
I interpreted it as “there’s such a big difference between artillery and a handgun you clearly have never been around an actual gun being fired before”
What did GP say about brain damage at all? Downthread he mentions people shooting 9mm pistols with hearing protection and navy SEALS as if they are the only two groups while not mentioning brain damage at all.
Aside from the cavalier “I know something you don’t” there was nothing of any value posted.
How does saying “you should expose yourself to both things if you possibly can” express that there is a difference between the two?
I suppose I can imagine that GP said that you can feel the difference between levels of brain damage incurred (they did not), but even if that were the case then why would you encourage someone to expose themselves to artillery if you thought the damage was more than zero?
“The damage from both is different but also zero if you zig zag check mate 8-)”
I’m only going to engage with you once, because I think you’re being deliberately obtuse in your comments. The following is in case you’re being genuine, and for other’s benefit:
There are several orders of magnitude difference between a 9mm handgun and a small artillery round. The difference is in terms of concussive force.
If you shoot a handgun with earplugs in, you hear a pop that sounds kind of like dropping a small ball bearing on a wood floor. You feel a shock in your wrists and a bit in your elbows, like high-fiving someone.
Now, you stand a few yards from artillery - and I’m talking Korean war artillery, not modern stuff. Also not talking about reenactment stuff; they usually just put a bit of black powder in there. I’m talking about small tow-behind artillery that you’d see at the Big Sandy Shoot (Google it).
You _feel_ the sound before you hear it. You’ll look for some shooting muffs to put on _over_ your earplugs. The concussive force comes through the ground, through the air, moves through your head and stimulates your eardrums from the backside. You feel your guts vibrate a bit. It feels like the ground moved under you, like you’re landing after jumping in the air.
And _that_ is an order of magnitude or so below what we’re talking about with SEALs here - those guys are placing explosive with a sticky backing on doors, and torching it off from not very far away. There’s stories from them of not being able to get physically “far enough” from a charge, and having to detonate it anyway because you’re in a freaking war zone. When a SEAL says “oh, this is going to fucking suck” before pushing a button, you know it’s real.
Aside from your advice to find an opportunity to expose oneself to the concussive force of artillery fire, it appears that you meant to answer “no” to this question:
> Could this problem also be affecting civilian gun enthusiasts?
Since you are clear that you do not think that civilian gun enthusiasts could be affected because they
> shoot a handgun with earplugs in
I thank you for your service for sharing your advice on how to become invulnerable to gun fire. Without that I might have doubted your expertise on this issue of brain damage from concussive force
>Plus, I think it’d be good for people to know you can become really hard to hit by all but the best shooters by… walking away slowly in a zigzag. Near impossible if you run.
I hope they never invent a gun that fires more than once per trigger pull, then you would be able to just sweep it around in the general direction of Invincible Mr. Zig
Unlikely, but… Small arms enthusiasts are often not great with hearing protection. As hearing declines, men especially tend to be less proactive in seeking care, mostly hearing aids.
Why does this matter? Hearing loss is often a causative factor with depression, social isolation, anxiety and early onset dementia.
Fear and anxiety drive a lot of the behavior that gun merchants leverage to sell guns. It’s a vicious cycle.
Artillery is orders of magnitude more powerful than guns.
Doing something is a stressful situation (combat zone) is infinitely more likely to lead to stress-related disorders than doing it in a safe, controlled environment (shooting range)
The whole article is about how brain damage caused their hallucinations and psychosis, instead of it being caused by stress disorders as is more commonly believed. The brain damage itself was likely caused by the shock waves from explosive shells they were firing.
I think it depends on the shockwave. Maybe someone can math it out, but it’s like the sound leaf blower makes vs standing right next to a jet engine. I have never seen a shockwave on the ground behind a “normal” firearm, but it seems commonplace with artillery.
Ex artillery officer here, the shockwaves from firing artillery can be so powerful they can knock you off your feet if you're standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and caught unawares
I've been surrounded by guns most of my life, going out to the shooting range at least once a month, sometimes more. Range days are busy, with sometimes dozens of people shooting on the line at the same time. The range is open air.
I have some hearing damage (which I actually think is from somewhere else - we've always been anal about protection). Other than that, no other issues to report with myself nor my family/friends who participated with me in this hobby. Small calibre gunfire does not have a big enough shock/impact to really affect bystanders. Interestingly, I dislike shooting in an indoor range, because so much of the shot is radiated back to the shooter and bystanders. Where in an open air range that impact goes up in the air and away.
Risk of lead exposure is very real though. A friend almost passed away due to too much shooting in an indoor range with poor ventilation. After some serious negative personality changes and other related symptoms he was finally diagnosed with nearly acute lead poisoning. Lead bullets basically vapourised when they hit the backstop, so the dust that's kicked up is very nasty.
Its the back of the bullet that is vaporizing from the start from the explosion and hot gases (since it has very low melting/vaporizing point), and then second, smaller spike is when hitting hard surfaces and melting instantly into 100s of pieces (if you watch any slow-mo impact of a lead bullet they mostly don't vaporize, just melt and fly parallel to surface being hit).
There is safe ammunition these days, but it costs more. Swiss make their military ammo lead-free (they have cca same ammo as US/NATO but bullets are most effective with different barrel twist compared to NATO ones, I think 1:7 vs 1:10), but both can fire each other's rounds safely.
Safe ammo is essentially just back of the bullet covering lead core (if present at all), but for some reason most manufacturers don't do it by default. Some stuff doesn't have lead core at all, but then desired weight needs to be achieved via other substances and is priced accordingly.
Almost all rifle (and quality handgun) ammo are copper jacketed, meaning no lead vaporisation until it hits the backstop.
I use solid brass ammo on one of my larger caliber rifles, but not the others. Guns can be very finicky about their bullets, and not all like solid brass ammo which results in weird accuracy issues.
Oh yeah, muzzle brakes are actually prihibited in many disciplines where multiple shooters share the same shooting line - they're extremely disruptive to competitors next to you.
Artillery has actually gotten smaller. Propellant charges have gotten "boomier" high explosive instead of smokeless propellants hence the traumatic brain injuries on the teams firing them.
Not at all. It might be a cause, but tons of PTSD has nothing to do with concussive trauma, so much so that the other cases overwhelmed the correlating cases when they investigated the causation.
I doubt they had the right technology back then to actually investigate for physical brain trauma. Even today CTE diagnoses are made post mortem. And one can end up with CTE without ever having a full blown concussion.
Navy Seals aren't firing artillery. The article says the Seals brains were damaged by their own weapons which I assume to be rifles but maybe I'm wrong.
they're talking about blasts from open-air combustion shoulder mounted anti-tank weapons.. very nearly artillery, and very loud.[0] . The article linked is the one mentioned in the parent article.
one of the major problems with such weapons is that although the support crew can shield themselves, often the firing soldier cannot due to operation of the weapon.
SEALs and other special forces use a lot of heavy weaponry and explosives in addition to small arms like rifles and sidearms. Think door breaching charges, grenades, rocket launchers, heavy machine guns.
I used to shoot competitively. We always wore ear protection. Even without it though, I would imagine there's a huge difference between an artillery shell and a .45 round.
although I agree that there are worlds of difference between small arms and artillery, I would like to point out that ear protection.. protects your ears.
there is no good way to protect from concussive blasts aside from avoidance and shelter.
fwiw most DoD studies have found that concussive blasts that seem to be damaging to personnel start at around the AT4/Carl Gustaf range of large shoulder-fired almost-artillery -- understandably since they're large and mostly open-air combustion driven.[0]
A .45 gunshot feels like a sound, and with hearing protections at a few meters you hear it but cant feel it in the slightest. You feel it in your hand but not further. Artillery is more similar to how it feels standing next to gigantic speakers at a concert, even with hearing protections you feel it throughout your entire body, except sharper.
I think the key here is to explore all options, not limiting yourself to the obvious.
Steel Industry:
In the steel mills people reported similarities 100-60 years ago. I remember talking to workers and their problems after being exposed to huge mechanical machines that form steel. Usually they are extremely loud, feel like a permanent earthquake, dusty and toxic air, hot temperatures and high risk for life threatening events.
I see some similarities here between steel worker’s mental impact and military. It is fair to say that some conditions are not really helping you as an individual “unlocking your full potential”. Some conditions are simply very detrimental to your health.
It’s not just the orders of magnitude difference in number of rounds fired; it’s the size and power of the rounds. SEALs don’t shoot soda cans with .22 rifles.
Unlikely, handguns produce significantly smaller shockwaves. Additionally the problems described in the article are a relatively new phenomenon related to the introduction of high explosive propellant cartridges, which small arms don't use.
Exposure to lead is a much larger risk for gun enthusiasts from my point of view.
Guns don't make shockwaves that damage your brain. Damage your hearing without ear protection, sure, but they're not sending shockwaves through your skull.
Shooting as a popular passtime has been around long enough that we know what the risks are: commonly tinnitus, rarely injuries related to what the firearm actually does, more rarely lead poisoning.
On the other hand, artillery and rockets are extremely loud. If you want to look it up and start comparing things, keep in mind that every 3 decibels represents a doubling in pressure, so a howitzer having twenty or thirty decibels on a handgun is actually saying a lot.
I think this is probably correct. There are people who shoot thousands of rounds per year and there hasn’t been any mind of established pattern of brain damage like this (at least to my knowledge).
It’s possible small arms fire doesn’t make big enough shockwaves. To cause the effects. I’d hypothesize it’s the larger blasts… perhaps even a frequency component to it? Blasts from a fast explosive like C4 could do more damage than slower shockwaves like mortar or artillery shots.
To someone familiar with the subject matter, “shooting guns gives you brain damage” is an absurd, incorrect idea that one feels obligated to voice an objection to, in order to perhaps slow the spread of misinformation.
A 3 decibel increase represents a doubling in sound energy. Sound energy is proportional to the square of sound pressure, so you need a 6 decibel increase for a doubling in pressure.
I'm into sports shooting, and during winter our club has an indoor range that used to be an old bunker. So we're in this 25 foot by 60 foot concrete tunnel, that's about 8 feet tall at most. Not a giant cavern by any means. And closed doors, so just (forced) ventilation open to the outside.
I've shot .357 magnum and shotguns in there. It's loud, yes. I wear ear plugs and ear muffs when doing that.
But not by any means do they rattle my brain, and I can't imagine it's anything close to what you see around an artillery when firing.
I mean look at the ground towards the camera in this[1] shot, clearly a powerful shock wave going out in all directions.
An interesting thought popped off in my head: what if it does, and the crowd that leans heavily into enthusiast firearm usage is giving themselves micro-TBIs -- could that over the years create certain changes in personality and psychological workings that lead to certain, similar outcomes? E.g. could it be correlated with political affiliation?
Don't read into it too much, though. This isn't snark or passive aggression, just genuine interest.
The thing I suspect will prevent this from being an issue for sports shooters is that I'm not sure the energy in typical sport shooting calibers is enough to induce micro-TBIs.
Sports shooters who shoot larger calibers, ie a 7.62 NATO or higher in terms of sound energy, are typically shooting relatively few rounds at a time. Those who shoot a lot of rounds typically shoot smaller calibers.
Now, I think you might have a point when it comes to competitive practical/dynamic shooters[1], who shoot open division with hot .40 super loads or similar. Especially those, like in my club, who train a lot in indoor ranges.
However these would make up a relatively small percentage of the overall recreational shooters out there I imagine.
I did a lot of clay target shooting with 12 gauge shotgun when I was young. That involves a lot of shots each session with pretty powerful cartridges, I'd suspect it is more deleterious than target shooting, even with large calibre guns.
Don't know about micro-TBIs but it sure fucked up my hearing.
Unsolicited tacticlol advice aside, I would say that the risks would vary dramatically between individuals. If one’s mental model of gun users is “firing a derringer into a pillow or operating heavy artillery” then the answer to your question would be “no”.
However
I’ve personally met a gun enthusiast that collected elephant guns [1] and shot barrels filled with tannerite [2] for fun. He was also… not all there. So who knows? ¯\_(ツ)_/
As an aside I entreat everyone not to entertain confident proclamations about secondary damage from weapons from someone that claims that they can avoid primary damage (bullets) by the proper tactical battlefield execution of a Sesame Street dance. [3][4]
* to quit with the games, relatively moderm firearms are 1700-1800's tech, with things like 3D printing banning them is as nonsensical as banning alcohol. Its just too easy to make.
Could this problem also be affecting civilian gun enthusiasts? Or is the order of magnitude of the exposure just wildly lower compared to the military, even in the most enthusiastic?